Career Options
by jacee2u
Summary: Harry returns to Hogwarts after getting rid of Voldemort, but can't figure out what to do with his life. He schedules a career counseling session with his new head of house. Rated M to be on the safe side of the ratings people.


Career Options

Notice: Harry and all other characters you might recognize are the property of JKR and whoever else might have the rights to them. Alas, I am not one of the "whoever else."

After the quest for the horcruxes and the defeat of Tom Riddle, Harry Potter decided to go back to Hogwarts for his seventh and final year. Due to the changes taking place in not only himself, but the Wizarding World in general, Harry finds himself in a second career counseling meeting with his new head of house.

Clarise Honeywell, the new Transfiguration teacher and Head of Gryffindor house for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was 23 years old, and in her first actual year of her career of teaching. After graduating from Hogwarts, there were three additional years of training and another two years as an assistant before this opportunity to 'the big time,' and 'Big Time' it was. Brand new in the game, and she finds herself teaching at her alma mater, the premiere school in Wizarding Europe. Not only is she teaching, but she was the replacement head of house for Hagrid.

Now, she finds herself in a bit of a quandary as her first scheduled meeting of the day is with none other than Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived. The winner of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. The killer of Voldemort. The Boy-Who-Saved-the-World. The boy who wanted her advice on what to do with his life. "How do I get myself into these messes?" she thought to herself as the bell rang and the second year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws filed out of the room as her "counseling period" began.

"Good Morning, Mr. Potter. Thank you for coming in. What can I do for you today?" Clarise Honeywell started the conversation as the Boy-Who-Saved-the-World walked through the door and took a seat. A wave of his hand shut the door and put up silencing charms.

Clarise studied the boy as he sat down. "No," she thought. "Young man. Definitely. A young man, whose seen more pain and suffering than anyone since Albus Dumbledor. Physically, Harry was a hair under five feet, ten inches, about twelve stone (roughly 170 lbs.), unruly black hair, and green eyes that you could fall into and never hit bottom. WAIT! Where did THAT come from?" she thought as a slight blush came over her.

"I've got a problem with what to do with the rest of my life. Everything has been 'Get rid of the Dark Lord' up until this point; and now that that is done, I was thinking about my career options after I finish this year," Harry stated.

"I mean, I originally thought about being an Auror, but after taking Tommy down, I don't think that would be a good idea. The sad fact is, I don't like the way the Ministry handled things during this war, and even if it changes after an election, pretty much the same idiots are going to be there, just in different positions. Nothing changes. Umbridge proved that to me." He stated this with a bit of a sad smile.

Sobering, he continued. "I also thought about teaching, but to be honest, I think I should wait a few years before I go down that road so that I'm not trying to teach my friends and getting called for favoritism when I'm grading. I mean, can you see me teaching and giving Luna, Ginny or even Dennis Creavey an 'O' and giving a Slytherin whose father I killed a 'A'? They'd be screaming even if they deserved the grades. Not worth the hassles.

"I also thought of going out to be a professional seeker, but then, they would be paying for the name, not my talents. There's also the fact that I don't think that the thing that I do for relaxing and getting away from everything should be my job. I mean, then what do I do when I want to relax? Then there's the autograph sessions, the stares, the fame and all that rubbish. All my life, I've always hated being singled out and now it's even worse. Just think what it would be like if I was on a pro team!" A small shudder ran through Harry's body as this thought came to him.

"I also thought about just doing nothing since I have the Potter and Black fortunes at my disposal. You know, being the playboy that Witch Weekly seems to think that I am, but then I run the risk of actually becoming the 'lazy, good for nothing, spoiled layabout' that my oh-so-loving Uncle used to call me." A hard look came into his eyes as the memories of his "family" came to the surface.

"Well, Mr. Potter -"

"Call me Harry, please."

"Okay, Harry. You've clearly decided what you DON'T want to do. Now, what do you think you WOULD like to do? Tell me what you have thoughts about. Tell me about you." Clarise asked.

"Are you sure you want to know? It's not really a good story," Harry said.

Clarise nodded and said "Well, I can't really help if I don't know your background."

"Well, I have thought a bit about it. Tommy and I were actually quite a bit alike." Harry stated, and then stopped at the look of alarm on his head of house's face.

"No!" He exclaimed. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued. "I don't mean like that. I'm not the latest and greatest Dark Lord in the making. If anything, I'm just the opposite. Now, would you like me to continue the thought, or leave now?" Harry asked with a smile and an odd gleam in his eye that was nothing like the previous headmaster's.

"Please, do continue. I'm curious to see where you are headed with this and how you could be the 'opposite' of a Dark Lord."

"Okay, This is going to be tough. I've never really put it in words before. It just sort of floated around, you know?"

Seeing the look of interest on Clarise's part, Harry took another deep breath and continued.

"I said Tommy and I were alike because, actually, we are two sides of the same coin. Both of us had rubbish for childhoods. Riddle was born and grew up in an orphanage, and everybody treated him like dirt. If anything went wrong, everyone said it was his fault. He was punished even if he had an airtight alibi.

"For me, from the age of 16 months, I was treated like a house elf from my relatives. I started cleaning up Dudley's room at the age of three, cooking breakfast for all of them at five, pulling weeds and mowing the yard at seven, painting the house at nine. My bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs. Even though I cooked all the meals, I never got enough to eat. If I got better grades than Dudley, I obviously cheated. I was beaten if anything was wrong, or if my uncle came home drunk, or even just for breathing. Before I started Hogwarts, my arm had been broken three times, my right leg twice, my left knee dislocated four times, and I think I had every rib broken at least once at various different times. My first new clothes of any form was when Hagrid took me to Madam Malkin's for school robes. Even then, it was only robes, not muggle clothes."

"I never knew. I always thought that you were treated like a hero when you were orphaned..." Harry looked up at her face, to see a mixture of sympathy and shock. It angered him, but he quickly quelled that emotion and took a series of deep breaths to control himself and keep from screaming and walking out the door. The look on his face made Clarise stop what she was saying.

"Yeah. You and every other person in the world, thanks to Albus." he stated bitterly. With another look at her eyes, he stated "This goes no further than this room. Understood?"

"On my magic, In whole or in part, this conversation will not be uttered to another soul." Clarise swore. A blue glow surrounded her and then linked to Harry as it dissipated.

Harry resumed. "Then, there was the whole thing with the Sorting Hat. Stupid hat kept trying to convince me to go into Slytherin! Said I'd do well... Right... I doubt I would have lived out the first week. Then, there was the whole Philosopher's Stone thing and the shade of Voldemort offered me my parents back if I joined up with him.

"In second year, I got my first real look at what Tommy was like when he was a student. To be honest, he looked a lot like me. A bit taller, a bit harder, maybe, but still, physically he was pretty close. His attitude, though. Evil to the core, even then. It all goes back to choices."

Harry took a breath at this point and conjured up a tea set and poured a cup. He offered it to Clarise, and poured himself a cup. "I hate talking. It's such dry work." Taking a sip, he paused in the story.

"I remember that. I was a seventh year at that point. Everyone kept going around you muttering that you were 'the next Dark Lord' and 'the heir of Slytherin' and blaming you, even though your background was that of a half blood, and your friends were the ones that were getting petrified. I always thought it was a load of rubbish." Clarise said, more to keep the conversation going, as opposed to having an uncomfortable silence build up.

"Third year was pretty good. I got to meet Remus, and find out later on he was a friend of my parents. On the bad side, I was kept in the dark and had a mass murderer after me. Turns out, it was my Godfather going after a traitorous rat. For the first time, I met someone that I knew loved me for ME, not just wanting to be around me because I was famous for something I had no control about. I learned how to cast a patronus, and it took the form of my father's animagus form. I managed to save Sirius, but the traitor Pettigrew got away, so we couldn't clear his name. For about ten minutes, I was thinking that I was finally going to get away from the Dursleys. That was probably the happiest ten minutes of my life to that point. It still rates up there in the top five of my life.

"Fourth Year, the press was slandering me and my friends, Ron was mad at me most of the first semester, I was stuck in the Tri Wizard Tournament against my wishes, Cedric was killed in front of my eyes, and Tommy regained a body. Not a good thing.

"Fifth year, to be blunt, sucked. Umbridge showed up, Snape basically raped my mind with what he termed 'Occlumency lessons,' Tom sent me visions of Sirius being tortured, and I led my friends into a trap in the Department of Mysteries. This led to Sirius trying to save me and his death." Harry had tears in his eyes at this point, but nothing fell. He had a far off look.

Seeing the obvious pain in his eyes, Clarise said "If you wish, we could continue this later."

The pain vanished as Harry recalled that he was not alone. " No. If I stop now, I'll never start again. It's funny. I'm telling you stuff that no one knows. Not Ron, not Hermione. Nobody."

Harry paused and took a sip of his tea. "Ugh. It's gone cold." He cast a rewarming charm on the tea and took another sip. "Ah... much better." Harry took several sips.

Finally, Harry broke the silence that was beginning to become uncomfortable. "Sixth year was... weird, and then ended bad. Professor Dumbledor showed me some of Tom's background, we figured out how he was keeping himself alive, and what to do about it. Ginny spiked my pumpkin just with Amortentia, and I was 'madly, deeply' in love with her for the year. I managed to get Snape's old textbook for potions; and Slughorn thought that I was the best thing since sliced bread. Malfoy took the Dark Mark, let the Death Eaters in at the end of the year, and Snape killed Dumbledor.

"After the funeral, I went back to Privet Drive, and realized that I since I was no longer drinking the spiked juice, I was not in love with her anymore. An epiphany occurred at that point, and I decided Mad-Eye has the right idea. No drinks for me without checking anything unless I made it myself.

"Hermione and Ron finally got together in public, Bill and Fleur were married, and we started researching where else Tommy had hidden the rest of his soul, as well as how to fight him after we got him back to being mortal again. While we were at it, I searched the Chamber of Secrets completely. I found a lot of books in Salazar's Chamber and started reading them. It turns out that the old saying that 'History is written by the victorious' is dead on. Salazar's notes on what he says were happening at that point in time are going to turn the world on it's ear if I get them translated."

Clarise was confused. "Translated? Why would they need to be translated?"

"They were written in Parseltongue. All of his books down there were. One thing was for sure. He was a paranoid old S.O.B." Harry said with a smile.

"So what books did you find down there other than Salazar's journals?" Clarise was eager at the thought of all of the knowledge those books would contain if they could be translated to a language others could use.

"A lot of books on Parseltongue spells all written by Slytherin himself, including the way I finally beat Tommy."

"Really, what was that?"

Strangely enough, Harry started to blush. He took another sip of tea and continued. "I'm not sure if I should tell you, but since this IS a career counseling session, I guess that I will have to... It was a book on combining Tantric sex practices and Parseltongue magic."

At this, Clarise, who was in the process of taking a sip of tea, started coughing as she covered her desk in the tea she had just inhaled. Harry quickly got behind her and patted her back heavily to assist getting the tea from her lungs. After a quick spell to clean the tea off of the table and the essays that were needing to be graded, he continued.

"I'm sorry. I should have waited for you to swallow before I said that."

"No worries, Harry. Please, continue. I would love to know what you learned from Salazar's writings, and how you managed to defeat the Dark Lord. As far as I know, you've never told that story to anyone," Clarise said, after she finally got her breath back.

"You're right. You would be the first one. That's part of the reason that I had you give your oath earlier. Ron, Hermione, and I finally got the last of the horcruxes disposed of. Ron lost his life on the last one to give Hermione and I a chance to get it dealt with. It was Nagini, Tom's snake. The only way to 'save the king and queen' as he put it, was to sacrifice the knight. That was Ron. Always with either chess or quidditch metaphors. According to Hermione, he may have had the emotional range of a teaspoon, but his strategy was spot on. We had lost so many people at that point. Remus at the Ministry, taking Pettigrew down with him. That was the only time a werewolf got an Order of Merlin, First Class. Kingsley and Mad-Eye in Diagon Alley. Hagrid, Hestia and Amos at Hogsmede. Sinistra, Sprout and Flitwick along with Seamus, Lavender, Justin, and Ernie here at Hogwarts." The tears were flowing freely down his face at this point. "I lost count of the number of times that Ron saved my life and my sanity, and; in the end, it was his sacrifice that finally allowed me to defeat the Dark Lord."

Clarise gave him a questioning look.

"You see, the way I whipped Tommy was a Tantric love ritual designed to strip him of his powers, making him a muggle. I needed a female partner, because that was another thing, that apparently, I was the opposite of Tom about."

A look of confusion changed to one of shock as she realized that Harry was saying that Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Dark Lord Voldemort, was gay. "Really? Are you certain?"

"Yes. Other than the fact that he would whisper in my head that he wanted me to join him in something more than just a partnership of power, how else do you explain that he was around for sixty years before he 'died' the first time without taking a wife, or even raping a woman to continue his line?"

"I never really thought about it, but I suppose it makes sense. So, what exactly do you want to do now?" Clarise stated. This was certainly NOT what she had envisioned for a conversation about career possibilities for anyone, much less Harry Potter.

A grin erupted from Harry as the gleam returned to his eyes. "I want to continue being the opposite of Tommy. I want to be a Light Lord."

This confused Clarise. "You mean a defender of the Light? That's pretty much what you are anyway."

"No, I mean that Tom had the wrong idea, but the right way to go about it. He was doing all of this for his own power, not for others. He never understood that power, money, all of that was just how to keep score. He thought that it was the end to the game in and of itself. His minions would take his mark and do his bidding because they were scared of him or they thought that it was a way to get power. Not because they respected him.

"The same could be done for the Light. My minions would be for equal rights and respect for magical creatures, muggle-borns, and even muggles. The Ministry is so busy right now alienating the goblins that it is going to have another war on it's hands in a couple of years. The centaurs hate us, the werewolves despise us, the giants fear us, and we aren't even talking about the vampires and everybody else."

"Here's something I bet you didn't know. The dark mark was from a tantric tattooing ritual involving anal sex and the tatoo was created using parseltongue. The only reason it caused pain when activated was because it was Tom's wish for it to do so. As much pain as it created, it could just as easily be any emotion. Even pleasure. Especially pleasure. He had just perverted it for pain. I could create a different mark and use it to cause a person to have the strongest orgasm imaginable for hours on end. I have learned rituals and spells that can cause everything from silencing the room to permanently increasing a person's magical core and intellect."

The slight blush Clarise had had when Harry first entered the room had never left. Every time it seemed to be leaving, Harry would look at her or say something that immediately brought it back. This latest turn of the conversation brought her to a full blush, with the heat not only on her face, but seemingly pinpointing her erogenous zones.

"Um, your minions? What do you mean by that, and why would anyone allow themselves to be bound to you? What would be the penalties for betrayal or failure? With the Dark Lord it was easy. Pain and Death. What would it be for a so-called 'Light Lord?'"

"Minions, followers, acolytes, friends, whatever you want to call them. Personally, I just call them Ginny, 'Mione, Susan, Hannah, Luna, Cho, or whatever their name is. I just called them that because that was what Tommy referred to his people as.

"As for betrayal, we wouldn't be doing things illegal, exactly, so that wouldn't be a problem. Failure will just cause the person not to get the good feelings. There's two ways to get something accomplished. The carrot and the stick. The carrot is used to reward someone for doing something. The stick is used to beat someone for not doing something. Tommy was the stick. I want to try the carrot approach.

"As to the 'why,' a physical and emotional representation of feeling good because of doing good works. It helps that my nickname in the quidditch locker room was 'Tripod' and that half the time since third year if I was limping in the hall, it wasn't 'because I was hurt. It was because I had just come out of a snog session in a broom closet and my pants leg wouldn't bend at the knee."

"Okay, Harry. I have just one last question for you. Do you accept teachers?"

The gleam in Harry's eye doubled it's intensity.

A/N: There's my first attempt at a fanfic. What do you think? Please read and review.


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